


Careful Choices

by coreczka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Mental Illness, University, Yearning, undergraduate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:39:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28906491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coreczka/pseuds/coreczka
Summary: Overwhelmed with Wizarding Britain after the war and unsure of where she belongs and the person she's become, Hermione Granger applies to attend an American University. Now, a semester before graduation, she runs into the past she wanted so badly to put in a box and not touch until she was ready.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Kudos: 10





	1. 1: Finals Week

It was the weekend before finals. December. The library was packed with students. Some cramming for exams, eyes glued to their laptops. Some rushing to finish twenty-page research papers, with books piled up next to them, strained with the amount of post-it notes stuffed inside of them. Some were staring catatonically at flash cards and scribbled notes. Some were sleeping, of course. Others were desperate to print essays, readings, or projects, with lines stretching longer than ever. 

Hermione knew her only hope for an empty spot near an outlet would be on the fourth floor—the silent floor with all the books she needed and the neat cubicles and private two-person tables—so she hurried to the staircase. The elevators weren’t really that busy, but she liked to climb the stairs, two steps at a time, to feel some kind of small accomplishment in her day that was spent glued to her desk chair. 

Each floor was quieter than the last, the steady buzz of voices fading until she reached the silence of the fourth floor. Newly renovated, it felt almost medical in some of its features—the blank white walls, the private offices for dissertation writing, the unforgiving fluorescent lighting. But it was peaceful. And, of course, silent. The carpets were a blessing, or else she would have been entirely too conscious of the way her boots sounded with each step. 

The game in the library is to look with such a scrutinizing gaze at each possible available seat without making eye contact with its possible occupant. Hermione was good at this. She was entirely too aware of how others perceived her, her speech, her body language. She moved through the fourth floor, peeking into study rooms and glancing over the barriers of cubicles. It was six in the evening, which was unfortunately prime time to hit the library on a Sunday evening. She liked the library immensely, but she had spent most of the day studying in her off-campus apartment and missed the best window to secure a comfortable seat. She was ready to beg, and very willing.

In a back corner, half-hidden behind a bookcase, she spotted a chair. Empty. Begging to be sat in. The other half of the table was obscured, leaving a fifty percent chance that the other half was occupied. But, she figured, she’d showered today and she wasn’t an obnoxious table mate, so the potential occupant of the hidden half of the table _had_ to have some mercy on her. It was finals week, after all. She made the approach, steps deliciously muffled by the carpet. 

As she moved closer, she spotted some papers peeking out behind the shelf and _shoes_ under the table which were attached to legs that crossed and uncrossed. This was fine, this was expected. She took a breath and took a final step closer.

“Hi can I sit here?” her last word faltered and her eyebrows shot up upon making eye contact with the other occupant.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” she looked away, looked back, considered the situation for a second, “okay bye.”

“No please, sit.” He had already moved his papers over the invisible halfway border of the table and more carefully stacked his books to give Hermione enough space for her laptop and any other materials. She hesitated. She needed a seat and she most likely would not find another seat like this. She considered the surroundings. An outlet on the wall, which also featured a window and a view of some academic buildings, a relatively private table, aside from the other occupant, and part of the window ledge could be used to stack _more_ books.

_Shit_ , she thought.

“Hi Malfoy, how are you?” she took a seat. 

“Good, you?” he looked up from his book and gave her a polite smile. 

“Yes, also good as well. Very good.” She managed to say. _God, this was awkward._

“Okay. That’s good to hear,” he smiled again, politely and without feeling, and looked back down at his book. 

That was her signal to shut up and unload her bag. Once she had everything set up, she got up to scan the shelves for that last book she wanted for her research paper. She didn’t actually need it. It was honestly unnecessary. There was just one essay in it that supported a minor argument in her paper that she already had a citation for, but she suddenly decided it was absolutely crucial to the very structure of the paper. 

_Malfoy. Draco Malfoy_ , she thought, _Draco Malfoy here?_

Hermione was twenty-two years old, attending a specifically non-magical university in the United States in a relatively small city in an area too far inland to be considered East Coast and too far east to be considered “the Midwest.” She had even chosen to attend the less prestigious of the universities located in the city. Of all places, why was Malfoy here?

Weaving between shelves examining call numbers, Hermione attempted to do the math. She tried very desperately to put together any number of different variables that would explain that man’s presence in the seat across from hers at the table she recently walked away from in a hurry. 

On finding her title, she continued to weave between the shelves, not yet ready to return to Draco Malfoy. She considered the possibility that she might be in some kind of dream state. She pinched herself. Her theory was incorrect. 

After five more minutes of listlessly wandering around, she decided it might be time to return to her belongings. Fifteen minutes had gone by. This was stupid, and her first exam was in less than twenty four hours and if she didn’t start studying now her carefully written out hour-by-hour schedule of _exactly every single thing_ she had to do would be thrown off and then she would have to just go home and go to bed because the entire evening of studying would ruined and she had walked _all the way here_ and—no, it was time to go back to the table. In her head, she practiced some polite conversation to have with Malfoy. Nothing too invasive or personal, nothing rude or harsh. Just polite small talk. Having a conversation without actually having to talk about anything. Perfect. 

The fourth floor was so quiet she could hear her heart thumping in her chest. Why had her past chased her here? She pointed herself in the direction of the table occupied by the man who she’d counted on never seeing again for perhaps the rest of her life. 

Silently creeping back into the corner the table was located in, she set her book down lightly and pulled her chair up, looking up, ready to make the mindless small talk she prepared, and saw an empty chair and no trace of Draco Malfoy except for a tiny bit of notebook paper that he’d most likely accidentally ripped while removing a sheet from a notebook and failed to notice while packing his books up.


	2. Library Books

She hadn’t wanted to travel back to England for the holidays. Her friends understood, again. It was the fourth year in a row that she let them know two weeks before that she would be staying in the States for her winter break. Before she had left, she’d asked them all to get cellular phones to communicate. Harry had been receptive enough, growing up around some muggle technology. Luna and Neville, too, were willing to troubleshoot a cell phone. But Ron and Ginny had grumbled and complained until she begged them one night before she left. Even if they had to share one and Harry had to set it up for them would they _please_ do it? For her? 

They agreed, and she knew the pushback had not really been about the cell phone, but about her packing up a suitcase and leaving them. She didn’t really think she had a choice. Her parents’ memories were never able to be recovered and they remained in Australia, happy and oblivious. It would have been selfish of her to subject them to intensive memory retrieval procedures at the handful of facilities around the world that specialized in the reversal of memory spells. She also wouldn’t have been able to afford it. 

Then there was the issue of trials and reparations and rebuilding and healing. She and Harry and Ron had returned to Hogwarts for an awkward “Eighth Year” and taken their exams while the castle was still being rebuilt around them. She was a witness in countless trials. Almost every night for a couple of months she had what seemed like endless witness statements to sign. Some in aid of the defendant and some to damn the defendant to a life in prison. 

She was some type of hero, asked to speak at different ceremonies and dinners and memorials. She was eighteen years old and didn’t have a clue about the world except that it had wanted to hurt her. She cried herself to sleep some nights. Most nights. No one really asked about her, how she was feeling, if she needed _help_. And she did, desperately. No one asked her how many people she had seen die. No one asked her how many times she had held the hand of a teenager forced to fight in a war as they died slowly from an unknown curse. No one asked her how many times she had pointed her wand at someone with the intention to kill. Sometimes her hand still shook when she held her wand. 

She was so angry at herself, at first. She had been integral in this victory. She was the brightest witch of her age. Why couldn’t she get out of bed in the morning and why would her voice crack at the simplest of spells? She ripped herself apart every day at each perceived failure. She felt worthless and alone and stupid. She could hardly read anymore; her mind was in fifty places at once. 

Ron couldn’t understand. Maybe he did, but he was better at bottling it up and forgetting about it. Or maybe he was better at letting it out and forgiving himself and others. She didn’t know. His hand in hers and his arm around her shoulders and his soft kiss on her cheek had all disappeared after about two months as she grew more reserved and emotionally absent. Maybe he thought she just didn’t like him, but she just didn’t have the energy to tell him that she didn’t have anything to give him at the moment.

She talked to Harry more. They had both always shared their feelings of not belonging—those his feelings were directed to the muggle world. As soon as he stepped foot in Diagon Alley when he was eleven, Harry had instantly known he belonged there—their feelings of inadequacy and failure. But Harry had Ginny to talk to. Not to mention it felt like the entire world wanted to know how Harry Potter was feeling. Not to mention he could afford to travel and heal and get treatment and just relax, with his fat vault at Gringotts and all. 

Things were different for her. With her parents separated from her permanently, she had no financial support, no freedom to take time for herself and truly recover. Towards the end of their Eighth Year, she had been scanning the job listings in newspapers and shop windows, writing to different organizations asking if they had positions available. The results were disheartening. When she finished her last exams, she realized she had nowhere to live—her parents’ house had been sold—virtually no money, and what seemed like no future. Only then had she opened up to Harry on the verge of tears and asked if she could stay with him at Grimmauld Place. She hated asking someone for help. Hated knowing that she wasn’t strong enough on her own.

Harry had opened his residence to her permanently. God knows there were enough rooms in that house for them to barely see each other. But that didn’t solve her financial issues or the issue of the gaping black hole that was her future. She had no Plan A, no Plan B, no Plan C. 

For a month she hardly got out of bed. She lost ten pounds. 

One day Harry forced her out of bed. She could see the pain in his eyes, having to witness her in this state. He carried her to the bathroom and drew a bath, helping her get undressed and step in. She didn’t have the energy to do it herself. He shampooed her hair for her and helped her scrub her body clean. He wrapped her up in a warm towel and brought her clean clothes. She hadn’t been able to stop crying after he left to pick up food for her. 

Harry was always like a brother to her, but in those few months, he truly became her family. Her only family. She had nothing in the world but Harry. He helped her look for jobs and academic programs (both magical and not). When she stumbled upon the program at the American university she eventually decided to attend, he supported her fully and even helped fill out all of the various forms and applications. They travelled to the area early to establish residence and any other roadblocks with a few spells and explored the city. She fell in love with it the first day they were there. It was so different from everything she had known up until then, and she needed that. Desperately. 

And slowly, she’d managed to feel like a person again, like she belonged somewhere and could be happy again. She could do magic without her hand shaking, and the wizarding community in this city was small but close-knit and welcoming. Things were okay. There had been ups and downs but things were finally okay.

And then she’d seen Draco Malfoy in the library. 

She’d tried not to think about their meeting but somehow it would pop into her head every day. In the shower, over breakfast, on a walk, reading a book. She couldn’t escape him, but he was absolutely nowhere to be found. For the rest of finals week, she hadn’t been able to spot him in the library—or any other academic buildings for that matter—in any of the restaurants or cafes around campus, not on the buses, not on the street. He was like a ghost, there one minute, gone the next.

She wouldn’t admit it to herself, but she was absolutely dying to know everything about Draco Malfoy’s presence in this city. She was incredibly nosy like that.

He had been free to travel, of course. He hadn’t landed in Azkaban or anything of the sort. He’d even returned to Hogwarts for his Eighth Year and to take his exams like the rest of them. He had restrictions about extracurriculars and outings and even mealtimes, but after the buzz of his return the first week, he was just another child finishing his education.

But then after their exams, she supposed, he could do anything, go anywhere.

But why here?

It frustrated her to no end, but she couldn’t let that consume her every waking moment. She had better things to do. Like go to the library.

It had been two weeks since final exams had ended. Most of the students left campus for the break, and almost every building was as silent as the fourth floor of the library. She liked it sometimes, the feeling that she was completely alone in the world. It was a calming feeling after months of pushing through crowds of students to get almost anywhere on campus, to have to make eye contact with people who she knew were making some kind of decision about the person she was from the way she walked and dressed and wore her hair. It was on her mind constantly, how people perceived her. But now, she could walk in random lines at a comfortable pace and _enjoy_ herself. In peace.

She had twenty-one books to return to the library. They filled two large bags that she was balancing on her shoulders, but the straps kept slipping. Research papers were her favorite part of the semester, and she wouldn’t even try to hide it. The only downside was lugging them back to campus on the bus.

As she yanked open the door to the library she felt a strap shift and she lost her hold on one of the bags. It hit the ground with a thump and she groaned as books slipped out. Adjusting the remaining bag, she bent to pick the lost books up. She saw a pair of legs run from behind the counter.

“Let me help you with those.”

Her head shot up.

Draco Malfoy was crouching in front of her in a wool cardigan, a lanyard with a card swinging on it that said _Library Staff_ , and a facial expression that absolutely oozed awkwardness.


End file.
